I received my doctorate in anthropology from the University of California-Santa Barbara in 1978. Most of my research is on native peoples of the Venezuelan Amazon (Yanomamö & Ye'kwana) with funding from the NSF, LSB Leakey Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. My research interests are in behavioral ecology, food & labor exchange, human ecology, marriage, parental investment, and Amazonia. I regularly teach courses on social organization, contentious issues in anthropology, warfare, and introductory cultural anthropology. I am also past-president of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society of the American Anthropological Association and a consulting editor for Human Nature.

Select and Recent Publications

Chagnon, N. A., Lynch, R. F., Shenk, M. K., Hames, R., & Flinn, M. V. (2017). Cross-cousin marriage among the Yanomamö shows evidence of parent-offspring conflict and mate competition between brothers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.